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Monthly Archives: October 2018

I get a lot of questions about how I get the dogs to sleep in. I think Melvin trained me, to sleep train. Melvin’s foster dad was in the army and they both woke at 0500 to walk. I don’t even know what 0800 looks like, so 0500 was never going to fly. The first couple of weeks Melvin was mine, he slept during the day and paced on top of the bed (with me in it) all night. I tried putting him downstairs so that I could get sleep but he barked non-stop. He had run stray, his skin was on fire. It took him a while to learn to relax but once he did, that dog embraced sleep like no dog ever has.

It has been such an honor to give all the boys a life where they could embrace sleep, and without them really knowing I was a sleep pusher, I was also happy to get them addicted to it.

Here are some of my tricks:

Never, never, never get up when your alarm goes off. This gives them the go-ahead to rise and shine the moment they hear it. By not getting up when the alarm goes off, they basically stop hearing it. This step will take the longest. Jake wasn’t great at this so I had an alarm clock downstairs and while we were watching TV or I was working, it would go off and I would not change what I was doing. Eventually, he ignored it.

Vary the times you hit snooze. Dogs can count, trust me. If you vary the snooze hits, they will learn that each subsequent alarm noise is a non-day-starter also.

During training, if they get up and try to get you up, be a lifeless zombie. Melvin would lay on top of me and cut off my breathing and I never moved. I just kept thinking: ‘0500 is what happens if you move’. Doug would lay on my face. DO NOT GIVE IN.

Have a verbal get up signal – mine is OK. This is crucial if you have to pee, but plan to come back to bed. I always give a stay command for this. It does not always work but all dogs have learned to follow me back to bed until the office OK.

I need 8 hours of sleep and that was always enough for Melvin and Jake. Doug needs 10-12 hours so he has been pretty easy to train once he realized the alarm means nothing.

I have a gate at the top of our steps so Melvin could go out into the loft whenever he wanted. Doug sleeps with me about 50% of the time (he has to stay used to his little bed area for when I have migraines) so he can also venture out to the loft. But by keeping them upstairs, we avoid ‘starting the day’ or seeing food bowls. Jake always stayed in his ‘meatball factory’ zone so he was the easiest.

Have a water bowl near the bedroom. It’s not prison!

This is how I did it with Max (came to me used to getting up at 7am), Melvin (0500), Jake (I’m not sure anyone ever gave Jake a schedule so he was just happy to have love), and Doug (goes from 0 to 4,576 upon waking so waking rules are key).

Last fall, I was lifting Doug out of my SUV. We had just been to rehab and even though he was cleared for activity, jumping out of the back of the SUV is a little tough on his stubby hippo legs so I always lift him out.

It is important to note here that aside from my parents house, Doug will not go #1 or #2 anywhere but in our yard or in our neighborhood. He would drink 5,000 gallons of water at rehab and never pee before I got him in the car to come home.

Why, Doug, why?

I’ll tell you why, my body, my rules. If you get to say it, so do I.

When I put him down on the ground and took the leash, I didn’t expect for him to lunge-run to the closest grass, which was about 30 feet away. I was pulled down and dragged/slid. The pain was terrible and I honestly felt dizzy from it. All I could do was hold onto his leash and get us both inside.

Ok, if I’m being honest, I may remember doing this now. But in general, I would never try to purposely hurt my sMother. I mean, my Mother.

My shoulder and arm hurt so bad, I thought they were broken. I had road-rash up and down my entire body. As someone who has a blood clotting condition and a takes blood thinners, you can imagine the horror scene. I had to make my way upstairs and into my shower so as not to bleed out on all of the white furniture I see the need to invest in!

Why, Tracey, why?

The road rash eventually cleared up. My shoulder pain went from excruciating to acceptable. I managed to still love Doug.

Over the past six months or so, my shoulder has become more and more painful and the activities I’m able to do with that arm have become more and more limited. Also, sleeping is impossible. There is no position that works. I mean, who needs sleep anyway?

I got an MRI and some X-rays and it turns out that I have fully torn Rotator Cuff on my right (dominant) shoulder. Surgery is set for mid-November and apparently recovery is terrible. Thanks again, Doug! I will be off work for one week, working from home the 2nd week and hopefully be in the office a little more from weeks 3-6. I guess the first two weeks I won’t have much use of that arm at all, which seems like it is going to make everything challenging. I’ve been trying to not use that arm at all to get my left arm ready but so far it’s not going well. I tried to put make-up on with left hand and I legit looked like a crack whore. I also tried to get dressed, brush my teeth, makes Doug’s food and blow dry my hair with just my left hand and I can say with absolute certainty that if it was only up to me, none of those things would happen. Luckily, I will have plenty of help.

The worst part about all of this is that I can’t drive for 6 weeks. Well, the actual worst part of this is that the pain I’m currently feeling is causing problems with my neck and likely contributing to an increase in migraines. But the not being able to drive part is up there.

Way to go Doug!

Um, who’s going to take me to get Pupccinnos?

Um, who’s going to feed me? It’s not my fault my brother is a jerk!

Melvin pulled me down once on a walk when he tried to take off running after another dog. I escaped with only a bruise. Jake poop’d on me but that mostly caused emotional bruising, nothing physical. Doug has caused the need for surgery. I don’t know what award he wins for this but congratulations on whatever it is!

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Many of you have sent notes and messages asking why I don’t post as often here on the blog. The answer is simple: WORK. Work has been crazy busy the past six months and by the time I have a moment to blog, I also have a million other things I want or need to do.

Work is slowing down, which is great, and hopefully I will be able to post on the blog more as that continues. I also have a surgery in November (I’ll post separately about that) so I will have several weeks of downtime. That should also give me time to blog. Writing this blog is my happy place. True story.

However, regardless of my postings here, we are over on Instagram daily. Instastories is something I can do while multitasking and we are pretty good about posting regularly there.

All of that content, is pure Doug. Even the name of our account: dougholupka.for.president . He regularly entertains his fans with his odd behavior, his strange sleeping positions and his new need to occupy the spot that I am in at that exact moment. Every once in a while he will share where he stands on his bid for president.

It’s true. I’m your next POTUS.

If you are new to Instagram, once you add us you will see that there is a feed that you can scroll through and the Instastories are found at the top of the feed. Just find our circle and click on it to watch all the Doug you could ever want. Each story only lasts 24 hours but have no fear, we post often enough to keep you entertained. And we will follow your account back!

Here are couple recent Instastories showing casing Doug’s new need to sit on me and him seeing BECKY and JESSIE last week!

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During the early days with Melvin, I was all about making lists of all the things he needed to change. A list of all the things ‘he was doing wrong’. When we finally found a behaviorist that I liked, and after finding a way to secure him in the car so that he didn’t jump in my lap while I was driving and traveling 55 mph, we met with her.

In one 60 min session, she changed the way I think about dogs (and people) forever. That might be selling myself a little short, since I have worked really hardat this area of life, but she was the one that gave me an ‘ah ha’ moment to build on.

I brought my list to her. The Melvin-is-terrible list. The how-can-one-dog-do-so-much-wrong list. She asked me to pick one thing on the list that caused me the most frustration. The one thing I wish I could change about him.

He is missing out on playdates with other dogs because he seems to hate every dog we meet.

In response to that she asked me three questions:

Do you like and want to spend time with every person you meet? No.

What exactly do you feel he is ‘missing out on’? Fun?

What if this is Melvin and he just doesn’t like other dogs? Is that ok? Wow. Of course.

She took my list and asked, what are the things he does that makes you happy? Make a list of that. What are the areas he’s already improved on? Make that a list.

From her I learned to meet Melvin where he was. Not to wait for him to arrive where I was or where I wanted him to be. I had to do the work to figure out who Melvin was, why he was where he was, and honestly assess what he (and I) should become. I couldn’t hand him a list and say ‘be this/do this’, I had to take each area of him and figure out how the two of us could be a team in him having a happy, successful life.

Obviously, he turned out to be perfect.

Melvin couldn’t bend for me. We had to learn a shared language. I let go of the demands, and embraced our journey.

In my life with Melvin, he never, not even once as a joke, play-bowed. He preferred me over other dogs, and he preferred me over all people, although he did love just about every human that he met. In Melvin’s first life, he didn’t know love. So once he came to me and felt crazy amounts of love, he became a love and joy junkie. He didn’t need a life with other dogs.

He had me. And then he had Jake. His life was complete.

I met Jake where he was. I’ve done the same for Doug.

She’s lying. I was perfect.

The number one thing I ask almost every day now is: why is Doug doing this? I don’t scream this at him, I don’t get upset about this question, I truly want to know why he’s doing what he’s doing so that he and I can figure out a better plan. What I have come to learn is that, Doug has a lot of fear about life. And the more comfortable he is with me and the more joy we find, the more he is willing to let his fear flag wave. He will run joyfully towards life and he will experience some form of fear in everything that is new. This list includes but is not limited to: bugs that crawl, bugs that fly, leaves, leaves that move with wind, mud, a clicking noise, a new car, a new food bowl, a sweater, a blanket with pom-poms, a new ring tone, shiny flooring, a purple koala bear on a cereal box.

He ran stray before he came to me. They don’t have purple koala bears on the not-shiny, rural streets of South Carolina. Every thing is new to him. It’s my job to make him feel safe but still encourage him to move in the direction of new things. In doing so, I have to step VERY FAR out of my comfort zone with bugs and mud and just this morning a slug, to meet Doug at Fear Avenue and get him on his way to the Joy Highway.